N.Y. lawmaker wants mandatory parenting workshops

Students' advancement to 7th grade would be blocked if adults didn't attend

Published: 02/21/2014 at 7:10 PM

(Cato Institute) Need an outrage to carry you through the weekend? If you’re the parent of a school-aged child, some lawmakers in New York state think your parenting skills could use “enhancement”—and want to force you to attend a series of “parenting workshops” as a condition of your kid’s progress to seventh grade.

“Requires parents to attend support programs designed to enhance parenting skills,” reads the official description of Bill S142-2013. The bill would direct New York’s education bureaucracy to develop guidelines for the content and distribution of a series of four or more workshops, of which one would be devoted to issues of abuse. (Why a state bureaucracy would know more about “parenting skills” than parents themselves is not explained.) Not only would parents have to attend, but for good measure the bill would require employers to bestow a paid day off each year for employees who are parents to do so.